Against the Tide of Time
by DarkAngelSnapeLover
Summary: When a strange torture case comes through the futuristic podcolony of NCIS, it's up to the team to figure out who tortured their dead petty officer. Unfortunately, the answer is something they never expect, and it's up to McGhee to stop their leading suspect, a familiar face, from taking down the ship housing their facility. One-Shot.


**Against the Tide of Time**

Note: This is a futuristic sci-fi piece that occurs maybe twenty or so years in the future.

Warning: Evil Vance

Abby looked up as the air lock hissed. She was still trying to adjust to her new lab, and her unhappiness showed on her scrunched face. She kept her gaze away from Gibbs, who smirked as he placed an e-file on the file reader. Thanks to some brain remodeling, he was a technology fanatic, and he easily pulled up the file Abby needed to add her evidence to.

"Gibbs, I can't work like this. The faux gravity thing is finally working, but I don't like watching my lab spin around the space station!" Abby hissed, glaring at Gibbs. He smirked, trying not to laugh. "Fine, fine, what more do you want from me?" she sighed, pulling up the results on their current suspect. "He's altered his appearance using some sort of extensive surgery. The blood we found at the scene is his and has high levels of anesthetic remnants. I'd say we're looking for a completely different person."

"Good, and what else?" Gibbs probed, looking up as Tony entered the room with McGhee not far behind. Abby eyed them carefully before looking back to her workstation.

"Our victim was poisoned. Dr. Wilson found a needle mark in his arm using the body scanner, and I traced the contents of the needle to a known terrorist serum known as DT-5, 'Done Talking 5'. The other four before it are more toxic, so they work faster. This one was slow to work, so our victim was definitely tortured," Abby sighed, her eyes moving towards the reflection of the adjacent podgroup's windows. Her lab was spinning again, and Abby gave Gibbs a pleading look.

"We have a dead petty officer on a moon colony, Abby. You're lucky we're not having to compensate for the time difference between here and your lab, and you know that. Come on, you two. I have a little project for you involving the leader here and that damned vehicle they put us with," Gibbs hissed, starting to move towards the air lock. When he noticed he wasn't being followed, he stopped and turned towards them. "Do you have something?"

"Yes," McGhee nodded, pausing for a long time before beginning his explanation. Like Gibbs, he had an e-file to show Abby, but this e-file was golden with a red border: classified. "Our petty officer was involved with a secret colony mission to go after the Cobra Snares Coalition. They typically just hijack supply runs between here and Earth, or the Space Station and Earth. They don't typically kill anyone, but their leader was killed in an unfortunate accident about six months ago. Now, they have a new leader, one we're familiar with," he nodded, pointing to the 3-D hologram image hovering over the e-file. "Former NCIS director Vance took over."

"I knew it!" Tony hissed, slapping his thigh. "He said something to me not long after this whole colonization thing started. He hates it, every part of it. It makes perfect sense, boss. We should go after him."

"You wouldn't want to start something like that," McGhee warned. "Our petty officer wasn't there for terrorism business. He breached the Cobras to get information and take them down from the inside. Now, I know this because another organization is throwing walls up around our case. We can't go after our killers, boss. It's too important to international relations."

"And their leader is going to meet with us to make this stonewalling official, correct?" Gibbs asked. McGhee shook his head, manipulating the e-file to reveal the written correspondence between them. "So he's on the new Mars colony to head this secret government group? Damn it, we just can't catch a break on this case. Do we have to turn over our DNA to these bastards too?" Gibbs asked, noticing the line about evidence retrieval.

"They don't want us, just the case. I say we turn it over. Vance still has some access to our files because he was here during the information transfer. Our IT department keeps track of unauthorized data retrieval, but there are some loopholes in the system. I'm going to help them try to stop those loopholes, with your permission, but we have to move on to something else. I say we get back to the bar fight case from District 6," McGhee suggested, his face solemn. It wasn't his place to give orders and it never was. Gibbs knew this as well, but he accepted McGhee's suggestions.

"Abby, collect every piece of evidence, including the body, and prepare it for a trip to the Mars colony. McGhee, once you finish helping her, get with IT and help them work through this. Tony and I will work the bar fight case, but if one thing lands back in our laps, we're back on this," Gibbs said sternly, leaving the lab with a hiss from the air lock.

"So it's an inside job from Vance?" Tony murmured. McGhee nodded, helping Abby begin collecting the evidence. "And he wants to break down these colonies by stopping supplies? This still doesn't make much sense, but I'll listen to you, McGhee. You've never been wrong so far."

"We hope," he murmured, looking to Abby carefully.

"You know something else…," she whispered. "Why didn't you tell Gibbs?" she asked in a sharp whisper. "He can help us work through this. That's what he was born to do!"

"He doesn't need to know that there are others in Vance's group with NCIS origins," McGhee replied, gesturing for Tony to come closer. "According to the records on that file, when Ducky decided to retire because he couldn't handle the new advanced technology, he joined the group within a year because he despised the colonies even more. In fact, the file implies he left NCIS to be a part of the group, just like Vance."

"And there are others?" Tony asked. McGhee nodded. "How many others have left government organizations to join this group?"

"More than the file is able to hold, and that's ten terabytes of data, probably more if they're compressed. I could analyze the card for more information and to see how much data it holds, but the problem is still clear. A lot of government officials are pretty unhappy with our sudden decision to colonize space and take Earth activities to those colonies. And the investigators aren't asking us to drop the case because of their undercover work. They don't want us to become a target ourselves."

"The monorail bombing…," Tony gasped. Two months before, the monorail service between the International Space Station and the moon colonies was stopped because of a stalled monorail. Several ended up piled on the magnetic tracks, and thousands were stranded for hours. Just as officials arrived to handle the situation, a dirty bomb exploded, killing hundreds instantly and the rest within coming weeks, when the radiation corroded their organs. Monorail service was stopped between the two locations, and security became almost impossible to deal with. Even government officials like McGhee were sometimes turned down for not following strict travel rules.

"You're right," McGhee nodded, "and there could be even more. We can't become their target, not until we have time to prepare ourselves."

"The loophole problem," Abby nodded, putting the last piece of evidence into a box. McGhee nodded, sealing the box with a special tape. Abby signed it before moving to her inner office to call Dr. Wilson, Ducky's replacement in the morgue. Dr. Wilson agreed to the move without hesitation, which Abby was grateful for.

Soon it was just Abby and McGhee in her lab, waiting patiently for the inner courier service to arrive to take their file. After an hour with no response, McGhee decided to call again to see what the hold up was. When he moved into Abby's office, he saw exactly why no courier was coming.

Far above the collection of pods of the NCIS pod colony, a firefight was going on between government officials and unmarked ships. Green and yellow lasers bounced around the sky, and McGhee noticed the pods' shields slowly being lowered over the building. Tiny burn marks already littered the top layers, and McGhee knew the shields wouldn't hold. He had to solve the problem, and he knew exactly where to go.

"Where are you going?!" Abby called.

"Firefight outside the pod colony," McGhee panted. "I'm going to hijack a ship using that new technology."

"Not without my help," Abby demanded, following McGhee step for step, despite the stop she had to make at the entrance of the airlock to keep the lab sealed from unwanted visitors. When they reached the IT pod, the officials were already starting to attempt a hijacking of the enemy ships, but scramblers kept their signals from working.

"There has to be another way," McGhee thought, looking out the small viewing window as an NCIS ship plummeted into open space. "Who's in the enemy ships? Can we get scans on them?"

"Of course," the IT agent nodded. "Their windscreens aren't shielded properly, so we've gotten clear scans of them so far. Why do you ask, Sir?"

"Vance," McGhee muttered, eying the ex-director's image on the screen. "He had an implant system put in like Gibbs to improve his brain power. I know how to tap into that, ship scramblers or not. It's a long shot, but wish me luck."

McGhee was given a workstation, and within minutes, he was aiming a small, blue laser at the ship in an attempt to get to the man inside. Vance was busy trying to avoid NCIS's security forces, and he never noticed his brain systems slowly being shut down. When McGhee finished separating the new technology from him, Vance's ship suddenly plummeted, but he soon recovered. He flew up past the viewing window, and McGhee could tell he was far less skilled at flying than he was a moment ago.

"He used his implants to take over new skills," McGhee smiled. "He can't fight, not well enough to do damage. He's leading them away!" he exclaimed, watching as the group retreated. "Cut them off. They'll follow him anywhere."

The message was relayed, and within the hour, eight terrorists were captured, including Vance and two other former NCIS employees. The organization who sent McGhee the initial request to stop the investigation sent a new message during this time warning them of an attack, but it arrived too late. The time differences between Mars and the moon were just too great, but at least the case ended well.

The organization wasn't entirely stopped, and many knew it wouldn't as long as there were people against colonization, but McGhee was hailed a hero for stopping some of the group's upper level men, who were planning more dirty bombs to send their message. NCIS still maintained cases both on Earth and in their pod colony, which irritated Abby for many months until she finally caught a view of Earth from her lab's viewing windows. She stared for the view's duration, halting her work for about three hours, but she was finally happy. The entire team was happy, even the new tech-happy Gibbs.

Theme 022: Inside

To complete the themes yourself, I have the list posted on my profile. The list is for any type of fan fiction (one-shot, drabble, etc.) and any fandom. Challenge yourself in other ways to make it more fun, and enjoy!


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